Gift
by thegunboy
Summary: Even lowly 4th Division medics have their gifts, although sometimes it takes a trained eye to see hidden things. Hanatarou, Byakuya, Renji - a little YaoiLite but more fluff than steam. And it's short. Thank you, Liralen, for requesting this!


**Gift**

The lamp-flame flickers, failing, and shadows reach long fingers across the matted floor. Hanatarou watches them through half-closed eyes and knows he should get up and repair the wick, but it's such a small light anyway, and he's so tired he feels like a rag-puppet filled with sand, limbs heavy and ungainly. Even staying upright has become a chore, and in a minute he's pretty sure gravity will win and he'll just sort of topple over onto his face and go to sleep. He hears himself make a snuffling sound, the beginnings of a snore.

The shadows touch the man on the pallet a few feet away and he stirs uneasily, throwing the quilt half-off, trying to sit up. The tangled red hair looks grey in the dim light, and the black marks on his skin look like extensions of the shadows.

"Get down," he says. "Where are the –" The rest is an angry murmur.

Hanatarou's body jerks slightly, the snore turning into a gasp, and his eyes open. He remembers why he's there – keeping watch over Lieutenant Abarai. He hadn't been asleep – not all the way, had he? He makes himself move forward on his knees, touching the lieutenant's wrist, feeling the racing pulse. His hand slides gently up to the man's shoulder.

"It's all right, sir," he says, in the low, careful voice that usually works with the delirious. "Lie down. I'll –"

Abarai stares at him. "Who are you? Why's it so fucking dark?"

"Yamada Hanatarou, sir. You know me - Fourth division medic. Please don't move around too much." Hanatarou exerts a little pressure, and Abarai resists it, pushing back. He's very strong, even with the fever, and Hana wonders briefly what it's like to be in a body that works so well, that has that much power. "If you lie quietly, I'll fix the lamp and get you a drink, but I can't do that if you're fighting with me, sir."

Abarai scowls, the tattooing on his face exaggerating it into a mask, but he lowers himself back on to his elbows with a grunt. "Fuck off and do it, then, Flower," he says.

The febrifuge tea Hana made earlier is cool in its jar and he pours out a cup of it, putting it into the lieutenant's hand, making sure he can hold it. "Drink that off, sir, all of it. It's kind of bitter, but it'll help you." He watches Abarai swallow it; then refills the cup for him and pads across the matting to the lamp, poking up the wick, trimming it, rekindling the little flame. The light seems to warm the room, and the lieutenant sighs, relaxing.

"As you were, Flower," he says, closing his eyes.

Kneeling by the pallet, Hanatarou watches him until the restless movements slow and cease, easing into a natural sleep. The lieutenant's colour is a little better, and he's come out in a sweat – Hana gets a bowl of water and a cloth, wringing it carefully so it won't drip, and washes the perspiration away from the smooth, cooling skin, unconsciously following the tattoo marks that crisscross the man's shoulders and torso.

He's not sure why Abarai has these signs, he's never said and Hana wouldn't ask, but they suit the lieutenant, black against the white like the random afterimages of lightning strikes. They might seem meaningless and archaic, but Hana thinks maybe they're not random after all but some kind of pattern of power, channeling it or holding it inside. They must mean something personal to Abarai, anyway – no one would do that to himself without a reason.

His eyes go to his own shoulder as if he could see what's covered by the black cloth of his coat – the blue misty swirls with red and orange chrysanthemums flaring through them, the fierce little fu-dog curving over his bicep.

_Come on, Yamada – your turn. You have to start sometime, right? All the rest of us are getting them. You scared or what?_

_Nah, he's not scared – he's one of the Kiku Street boys, too, aren't you, 'Tarou? _

_'Course I am. For always._

_OK then – go on. Zaru's kind of wasted, but he can still ink – just hold real still._

The flowers are a little clumsily done, the outlines going thicker and then thinner where the drunken tattooist's hands had shaken, and they've stretched out a bit – he's grown some since he joined the Gotei 13. Still, they're a part of him, a piece of his past driven into the skin from shoulder to wrist. _Kiku Street for always_. No one's mentioned anything to him about it, but he's seen them looking when he has to strip for exercise or the bath, so he tries to keep it hidden when he can.

Not like Abarai's. _He_ doesn't have to hide anything.

The lieutenant's resting quietly - Hanatarou rises to his feet and takes the bowl out to the water-bucket in the passageway. A cold wash would feel good - keep him from even thinking about dozing off again. He looks up and down the corridor, but at two a.m. the place is as quiet and empty as a temple graveyard, so he shrugs out of the top half of his coat and under-kimono and splashes water over his face and chest and arms, shivering a little as the air raises goosebumps under the flowers and the lion-dog.

"Yamada," says a low voice behind him, and Hanatarou yelps and drops the bowl with a clatter, scrabbling at his kimono. Kuchiki-_taicho_'s hovering in the gloom, a pale column of scarf and robe, silent-footed and controlled.

Hanatarou curses himself for the noise he's just made, for not anticipating that the captain would of course come and check on the condition of his second-in-command, and most of all for being caught standing half-naked in the corridor, the gaudy ink right there for anyone to see. It _would_ have to be Kuchiki Byakuya who caught him, too. He's got the under-kimono most of the way on, the thin white fabric sticking to the wet parts, and he's muttering some kind of apology when the captain puts out a hand and stops him.

"Don't do that."

"Don't do – no, Captain, I won't, I – " Hanatarou realizes he doesn't know what he's being forbidden to do, and goes still and silent.

"You should know to dry yourself properly before you put your clothes on. You don't want to take a fever, too."

"No, _taicho – _it's all right,I'm never ill, sir -"

"Be quiet, Yamada." Byakuya gives him a gentle push back through the door into the warm inner room. "How is Abarai Renji progressing?" He lowers himself to his knees beside the pallet, a single flow of movement that barely stirs the air around him. His hand goes out again, this time to touch his lieutenant's sleeping face. It looks like the natural gesture made by anyone who understands sickness, but it's slower, and the long fingers rest against the high, sloped bone of Abarai's cheek a little longer than is necessary before moving up to stroke his forehead, along the angled marks above his brows. A caress in disguise.

Hana coughs apologetically and says, "His fever's turned, sir – you can feel he's cooler, and the delirium's gone. I got him to take the tea I made for him, and kept him quiet. That's really all you can do, since there's no real cure – just let it run its course and burn out. He's much better than he was yesterday. He'll be kind of shaky when he gets up, but –"

"You watched him yesterday as well?" Byakuya's head is still bent over his lieutenant.

"Yes, sir. Yesterday, last night, today, tonight. I wanted to keep an eye on him, since I could tell he was coming to the crisis, and his fever was so high. He's very strong, though, sir, and – determined – so I thought it would probably be all right. I just wanted to make sure."

"Two days and nights?"

"Well, yes, sir – that's the usual amount of time with this sickness." Hanatarou's beginning to wonder if he's done something wrong and pulls nervously at his damp kimono. The captain glances up, and Hanatarou can _feel _the cool eyes on him, his reddening face, his ruffled hair and disordered uniform, the pictures on his skin. The aristocratically-angled eyebrows rise slightly, and Byakuya sits back on his heels, still looking at Hanatarou.

"Step into the light, Yamada."

Hanatarou shuffles forward a little, feeling naked.

"Are those flames? No – I see they're flowers… chrysanthemums?"

The Kiku Street boy nods.

"And a lion?"

"It's a fu-dog, sir. Not a very good one…"

The taicho actually smiles. It's a brief smile, a little like a faraway flash of lightning, there and gone, but it's a smile. Probably. "Yes, I can see that's what it is now I know what I'm looking at."

"It's just something… the tattoo… from where I lived before, in Rukongai Eighty – we all had them. I try not to let anyone see it, but –"

Byakuya rises with a last swift look at the sleeping Renji. "Do you know what it means?"

"That I'm demoted, sir?"

This time it's _definitely_ a smile. The tip of an elegant, capable finger brushes the little snarling animal among the flowers, and Hanatarou just manages to keep himself from shivering again.

"They say that when they're puppies, their mothers throw them from cliffs, to ensure that only the strongest and best survive. They're guardians, so they must understand evil and be powerful enough to fight it. That's all. I only wondered if you knew."

"No, sir. Thank you, sir." Hanatarou looks at the image that moves with the muscles under his skin. _There's always a reason_.

The hand is withdrawn, and Byakuya turns away. "I'll come again in the morning, Yamada. Until then, I leave Abarai Renji to you. And find yourself a dry kimono."

"Yes, sir." Hanatarou says. "Thank you, sir."


End file.
